Cash-receiving devices such as pay telephones and vending machines must be periodically attended to collect and remove the accumulated money. This money typically is transferred to a central location which contains equipment for mechanized sorting and counting of the money.
Although some coin-operated vending machines simply collect the received coins or bills in a container from which an attendant can empty the money on the spot, transferring the accumulated money to a portable vault or other collection device carried in a service vehicle, the accessibility of uncounted coins or other money at each machine presents the temptation of pilferage and the possibility of theft each time money is removed from the machine. One solution to this problem is to equip each cash-operated device with a removable coin box which cannot be opened by the collecting attendant or by a thief, without forcing open the coin box. Conventional pay telephones are one example of coin-operated devices which utilize such removable secure coin boxes. The collecting attendant for the telephone company carries a key which only unlocks a door allowing access to the coin box within the pay telephone. The attendant then removes this coin box, replacing it with an empty coin box carried for the purpose. The individual coin boxes removed from a number of pay telephones are collected and returned to a secure central location, where the coin boxes can be opened to remove and count the money.
Each such individual pay-telephone coin box, while not designed to withstand a prolonged physical assault by a determined thief equipped with suitable cutting tools, is relatively sturdy and thus presents an unattractive target of casual theft. Nonetheless, in an effort to prevent theft of the coin boxes from the collection vehicle, security vaults have been proposed for temporarily storing the coin vaults. Such security vaults typically have separate receptacles for receiving the individual coin boxes as each is removed from a pay telephone; one such apparatus is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,587,485. The security vault is removably carried in the collection vehicle, and the entire vault is removed from the vehicle at a central location where the vault is opened and all receptacles are removed to empty and count the money.
These security vaults typically allow access to only one coin box at a time by the collecting attendant, who must manipulate some mechanism of the security vault after inserting a coin box therein. This manipulating step typically secures the just-inserted coin box in the security vault, and presents an empty coin box for removal by the attendant. This empty coin box then is swapped with the coin box removed from the next pay telephone being serviced, after which the security vault again is manipulated to secure that coin box and to present another empty coin box. This procedure is repeated on the collecting attendant's rounds until all the empty coin boxes previously loaded into the security vault have been replaced with money-containing coin boxes removed from pay telephones. The attandant then returns to the central location, where the coin boxes are removed from the vehicle security vault under secure conditions.
Such security vaults of the prior art generally prevent more than one coin box at a time from being accessible for possible theft or pilferage. However, such security vaults are characterized by relatively complicated mechanical design, typically using springs, sliding doors, or other components relatively susceptible to jamming or other operational failure. These mechanical problems are compounded by the usual working environment of the security vaults, which are frequently transferred to and from the collection vehicles and subjected to vibration and shaking while carried in the vehicles. Consequently, the operation of the security vaults frequently leaves much to be desired.